Famous Asian Botanical Artists - BOTANICAL ART & ARTISTS. India and China. Our Indian and Chinese art collections consist chiefly of pieces commissioned by officials working for the East India Company in the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century. The Indian artwork collection contains around 15,000 individual pieces produced since 1750. The Chinese collection contains more than 2,000 scientifically important botanical and zoological paintings collected by John Reeves during his time in China (1812–1831). There are also a small number of pieces from collections not commissioned by Reeves.
East India Company officials working in India and China became an invaluable resource for the research and documentation of Asian natural history. They commissioned and created artwork for various reasons. Some were fascinated by science and natural history. Others commissioned and created work to help them understand, for commercial purposes, the areas into which the East India Company was expanding. Style Style The Reeves collection [KK1]Three times the size of what? Bhutan: Sikkim-Himalayan Rhododendrons. Korea: Shin Saimdang. Thailand Mural. Chinese Botanical Paintings in the British Library Visual Arts Collection - Asian and African studies blog.
Rita dal Martello is completing her doctorate at UCL and has completed a doctoral placement at the British Library in November 2019. In 2019 the Visual Arts team has been pleased to welcome Rita Dal Martello as the section’s PhD placement focusing on Chinese works on paper. Rita has primarily been working on translating, identifying and cataloguing a collection of over 300 watercolour painting of botanical subjects along with additional paintings related to Chinese furniture and interiors, methods of torture and also the Macartney Embassy to China in 1792-1794.
This blog will explore some of Rita’s research related to the Chinese botanical paintings cared for by the Visual Arts team. In 1975, a collection of Chinese botanical paintings was received from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office comprising of 6 volumes of mostly quarto-size sheets of watercolour illustrations. Pale pink Japanese camellia (Camellia japonica) by an unknown Chinese artist, c.1800. Chinese herbal (ca.1800) | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Chinese herbal (ca.1800) The Library has digitized Account of 814 Plants & Insects, Most of Which Are Reckoned Medicinal by the Chinese (ca.1800). This manuscript Chinese herbal dates from around 1800 and was purchased by Rachel Hunt in 1939. The text is written in Chinese and annotated in English in a different color of ink. The book has no title page or preface nor any additional text beyond what is in the individual entries. Typically there are four entries per page, and the reverse sides of all of the leaves are blank.
The first text leaf also has these words written in English across the top of the page: "Account of 814 plants & insects, most of which are reckoned medicinal by the chinese; the representations generally show when the plant itself, or its root, flower, or fruit, is to be used; in reading their names, the vowels a, e, i, are most commonly to be pronounced after the french manner; the book is bound after the chinese manner, and begins where ours end.
" No. 001–200. Yuuga: Contemporary Botanical Watercolors from Japan | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. This fully illustrated catalogue accompanied an exhibition of 43 works—the majority of them donated—by 33 artists. Meaning elegant and gorgeous, yuuga aptly describes these contemporary botanical paintings and this delicate catalogue. The artists included Junzo Fujishima, Rei Fukuzawa, Tadako Hayashi, Mieko Ishikawa, Michiko Ishiyama, Yoko Kakuta, Yumi Kamataki, Yoshiko Kamei, Seiko Kijima, Sanae Kikuchi, Yuriko Kikuchi, Hidenari Kobayashi, Mariko Kojima, Mieko Konishi, Makiko Makihara, Naomi Morino, Sadao Naito, Yoko Nomura, Yoai Ohta, Takeko Sagara, Masao Saito, Masako Sasaki, Toshi Shibusawa, Akiko Shimizu, Fumiko Sugizaki, Kiyohiko Sugizaki, Kazuko Tajikawa, Kazuto Takahashi, Miyako Takahashi, Kiyoko Tanaka, Yoko Uchijo, Keita Yonezu and Keiko Yoshida.
The catalogue included a preface by James J. Xiao mie wen ying de ye sheng zhi wu. Chengru Feng: The founder of biological illustration in China - PMC. Chinese artist Fang Zhaoling (1914–2006) YANG YANPING.
Late 17c Chinese Drawings of Plants (Cunninghame?) Japanese Flora. Japanese agriculture in the early 19th century | Digital Collections. The Seikei Zusetsu is a richly illustrated agricultural encyclopedia that was commissioned by Shimazu Shigehide, ruler of the Satsuma Domain, a province in southern Japan roughly corresponding to modern day Kagoshima prefecture.
The compilation of this encyclopedia lasted from 1793 to 1804, through a collaborative effort by So Senshun, Kokugaku scholar Shirao Kunihashira, Confucian scholar Mukai Tomoaki and Rangaku scholar Hori Monjuro. The purpose of this encyclopedia was to provide a source of information for improving agricultural production in Southern Japan. Improvements refer to the expansion, diversification, and maximization of agricultural production. Although the original encyclopedia consisted of a hundred volumes at the time of completion, seventy wooden printing blocks were destroyed in two major fires, leaving only thirty volumes to be published. Flora Japonica exhibition. Thanks to its geographical isolation and great diversity of climates, Japan is home to about 7,000 plant species of which approximately 40% are endemic. For centuries Japan was inaccessible to foreigners.
Nowadays Japanese plants are to be found in gardens around the globe, but only 200 years ago they were virtually unknown to the outside world. Paintings in the new Flora Japonica exhibition Exhibition highlights Flora Japonica showcases amazingly detailed historic drawings and paintings of Japan’s native flora by Tomitaro Makino, known as the father of Japanese botany. He was one of the first Japanese botanists to use the Linnaean system of taxonomy to classify plants. Nerium oleander var.indicum by Tomitaro MakinoMitrastemon yamamotol by Tomitaro Makino Detail of Vitis coignetiae Pulliat. A sequence of stunning paintings, selected by Dr Shirley Sherwood from her collection, are also on display as part of the exhibition. Rankafu – legacy of botanical woodblock prints - Renata Gorska -
Japanese Nursery and Seed Trade Catalogs · Nursery and Seed Trade Catalogs · Special Collections Exhibits. Japanese Floral Prints - Kew Botanical Prints. Japanese Botany and Woodblock Printing. Talking in Flowers: Japanese Botanical Art | Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. This catalogue was produced as a companion to an exhibition of mainly 19th- and 20th-century Japanese botanical art. Drawn primarily from the Institute's collection, the works included books, handscrolls, sketchbook albums, woodblock prints and paintings. Talking in Flowers served as a fine introduction to the history of Japanese botanical art. It contained relatively unknown artists and illustrators who were generally only listed in specialized bibliographies. The catalogue was extensively illustrated with color and black-and-white reproductions and featured an essay by John V.
Brindle (1911–1991; curator of art, 1961–1982). Errata Page 16, Figure VII, credit in caption should read: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Purchase, Francis H. Page 21, line 11, acknowledgement should read: Ikenobo Society of Pittsburgh: Mrs. Page 21, lines 21 and 22, photograph credit should read: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Purchase, Francis H. Page 23, entry 1, omit "Color" Illustrated Manual of Medical Plants. This book is considered the first full-scale botanical art book in Japan. It was published in the late Edo period and comprises 92 volumes (volumes 1−4 remain incomplete), including more than 1,900 varieties of plants. The author, Iwasaki Kan’en (1786−1842), was a shogunate vassal.
The work contains colored illustrations of wild species, garden species, and imported species, captioned with taxonomic names, and includes biological explanations and other information. The plants are classified and arranged according to the 16th-century Honzō kōmoku (Bencao gangmu in Chinese), a Chinese book of medicine of the Ming dynasty.
Ryusui Katsuma: Yama no sachi / Kazamashobo Tokyo: Icones of Japanese algae. Keinen Imao. Tanigami Konan. Tomitaro Makino. Iwasaki Tsunemasa. Magnifique planche de botanique japonaise créée vers 1876 du @MuseeEducation à découvrir dans la carte blanche donnée à Arnaud Nebbache pour #LaRonde : goût de l'ailleurs et goût des sciences...… Chiba University launched Open Access Resource 'c-arc' Chiba University launched a new academic resource collection named "Chiba University Academic Resource Collections (c-arc) " which makes contents published and provided by Chiba University Libraries widely available on the web. This website is a new infrastructure to realize "Digital Scholarship," which promotes using digital content to research, education, and learning materials.
Not only students and researchers at Chiba University, but anyone can use this open resource. Now "c-arc" offers Rare eastern medicine book collection, Horticulture book collection on Edo-Meiji era, Archive of the family Machino and Fungi and Actinomycetes gallery. Rare eastern medicine book collection This collection mainly consists of Japanese and Chinese medical books, as well as books on herbal medicine and Western medicine, published and transcripted in the period from the Edo period (1603-1868) to the early Meiji era (1868-1912). Horticulture book collection on Edo-Meiji era Archive of the family Machino. Lost Grains and Forgotten Vegetables from Japan: the Seikei Zusetsu Agricultural Catalog (1793–1804) The Seikei Zusetsu catalog contains 143 illustrated pages with crops, with a total of 193 drawings of individual crop varieties.
Each illustration is accompanied with a name in Kanji characters to indicate the commonly used Chinese name of each specific crop variety and its name in Katakana characters that represent its commonly used Japanese name. Some of the illustrations, like the one of Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott (Fig. 3), have been annotated with binomial names. This handwritten text was most likely added by von Siebold or by one of his students. These Latin names are not present in the black-and-white copy published online by the Hathi Trust Library or the color version on the website of the Japanese National Diet Library. All 143 illustrated pages can be viewed online at the Special Collections repository of the Leiden University Library, with their local and current scientific names: Table 1.
Fungi. Yokohama Nurseries. Japanese sketches : manuscript, [18--?]. - Franklin. New Book | Indian Botanical Art | Enfilade. Distributed by ACC Art Books: Martyn Rix, Indian Botanical Art: An Illustrated History (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2022), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-8195256655, $35. This book brings together striking botanical art of Indian origin spanning a period of 300 years, focussing on the 18th and 19th centuries. Drawn mostly from original works held in the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, some of the paintings have never been published before. They showcase the richness and variety of art commissioned from talented, mostly unknown, Indian artists who made a substantial contribution to the documentation of the flora of the Indian subcontinent.
A foreword written by Sita Reddy places the collections in contemporary context. Martyn Rix is a renowned horticulturalist, author of many books, and editor of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. Like this: Like Loading... Some of the very beautiful paintings by William Carey from West Bengal, India. Botany in British India Material. A Journey Through Botanical Art in Colonial India – and Beauty. For anyone who has studied botany at the post-secondary level, gathering flower and leaf specimens to build a mini-herbarium would be a familiar experience, ranging from fascinating to tedious.
The task of identifying the plants, locating them within the complex classification system, pressing them carefully and then documenting the life-cycle through meticulous drawings… It could be a labour of love or, for some, a chore. I recall spending hours with pencils sharpened to a dangerous point, placing a glass sheet under the paper to ensure the impression of the fine lines did not carry through to the next page. It was accompanied by the thrill of being able to look at plants with the beginnings of an intimate knowledge of their inner lives, along with the aesthetic satisfaction of visually depicting them through this botanical exercise in still life.
Celestina Lepcha painting floral motifs on a vase. Credit: HINHA Gmelina asiatica, painted by Rungiah, c. 1827. A Calcutta botanical drawing of Hamiltonia suaveolens with an interesting provenance. Henry Noltie Some years ago, as part of the barter economy, I acquired a handsome, but all but empty, early nineteenth-century album, its calf spine lettered in gilt ‘CHINESE PAINTINGS’. The binding is a luxurious one, of small-folio size, with marbled boards and olive-green, watered-silk endpapers. Tipped onto its flyleaf is a later, supplementary sheet signed with the names Katherine Amelia and Elizabeth Margaret Hibbert and the date 21 August 1845. When I received the album it still contained a loose sheet with a manuscript list of the Canton botanical drawings it had once housed, but the drawings themselves had long since been excised leaving only the stumps of their backing sheets. This list I restored to the current owner of some of the drawings, not only for its record of the original scope of the collection but, more importantly, because it was dated (1778) and it is rare to be able to put a precise date on such Chinese export works.
An interview with William Dalrymple, by Mark Rappolt / ArtReview. This December, the Wallace Collection in London hosts Forgotten Masters: Indian Paintings for the East India Company, curated by the award-winning historian, writer and curator (and cofounder of the annual Jaipur Literary Festival) William Dalrymple. The exhibition, which roughly spans the years between 1770 and 1840, is billed as the first in Britain dedicated to the Indian artists who were commissioned by British patrons associated with the East India Company, artists whose work (much of which was destined for export to Europe) has been generally grouped, by art historians and curators, under the umbrella term ‘Company Painting’ rather than credited to individuals.
Moreover, the exhibition attempts to argue that these individuals deserve a place in the history of Indian art more than they merit a place in the history of colonialism. William Dalrymple: Correct. The East India Company was very different in so many ways from the Raj. WD: I don’t think it’s a deliberate ploy. Botanical Drawings made in Nepal for Nathaniel Wallich in 1821 by Vishnupersaud and Gorachand.
Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company - The Wallace Collection. A tangled Calcutta-Caledonian web: James Kerr, John Fleming and John Hope’s engravings of asafoetida. □□ Connecting Histories is now open! Our brand new @RBGECreative exhibition in the John Hope Gateway spotlights Indian botanical drawings from our archives, highlighting the Garden's long and historic links to India□ □ Supported by @PostcodeLottery.